Shopping carts have been provided with a containment means in a lower part of the frame and such containment means is usually provided by a support meshing extending between opposed side frame members to which the casters are secured directly under the bottom wall of the containment basket. A typical example of such lower support frame is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,751,059 which relates to an over-the-counter shopping cart. It is pointed out that it has not been feasible to provide a lower container whereby more products may be retained by the shopping cart as most carts are made to nest within one another, when not in use, and as also illustrated in the above reference U.S. patent, and a lower basket would prevent the nesting. By providing a lower flat frame as shown in the above-referenced patent, the shopping carts can still be nested.
With the advent of large warehouse-type shopping stores, it is now common to purchase large objects in such warehouse-type but a disadvantage has been to carry elongated size objects by conventional shopping cart. For this reason, some of these warehouse outlets provide dollies which is merely a rectangular pallet supported on wheels and being displaced by a large U-shaped vertical handle bar in the rear thereof. A disadvantage of these pallets is that they are very large and cannot be nested and occupy a lot of space in the aisles and consequently these must be stored outside the stores and this causes several secondary problems such as the pallets being left stranded in the parking areas causing damage to automobiles, they can be stolen and also cause injuries to people's legs and anckles, etc.
Another disadvantage of the conventional shopping cart, when used in these warehouse-type stores is that elongated objects of irregular sizes, such as garden tools, i.e. shovels, rakes, etc. or any elongated object is usually placed into the basket and protrude outwardly thereof from the sides rear or front causing injuries to customers and causes damage to goods stored in shelving along the sides of the aisles through which these shopping carts are displaced.